Isaiah 42:5-7 (p. 1124)
In the previous chapter of Isaiah, God had addressed the pagan nations of the world.
There God made a scathing attack on the idols and the idolatry of the nations of this world. The book of Isaiah is filled with prophecies about the future, including the names of kings who would be born generations later and nations that would only be established a century after the prophecy. In stark contrast, the supposed gods of the other nations of this earth could never foretell anything accurately.
Pagan gods could never do that because they did not even exist, and the religious practices of their religions amounted to noting but pitiful fraud.
In chapter 42 of Isaiah, the Lord points to his Servant, the Messiah-Savior, as a stark contrast to the fraudulent gods of the pagans.
He will be the chosen Servant of the Lord of heaven and earth. He will help the weak and strengthen the disheartened. He will bring justice to the earth. In his word the nations of the world will put their hope – an Old Testament promise of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.
As God goes on in the words of our text, he addresses the Savior personally and tells some of the great things that the Savior will do when he comes into our world. In the words that God speaks to us in our text, he reminds us that everything the Savior will accomplish will be because he is strengthened by God to accomplish what God sent him into this world to do.
Like the Magi who first came from the east to worship the Savior when he was still a young child, will also see our Savior if we …
Look To The Servant Of The Lord.
I. He Is The Light That Opens The Eyes Of The Blind.
Most of those blinded by unbelief have never heard of the LORD.
They are born, raised, and live their lives in places where the true God and his word are unknown. China alone holds one fifth of the world’s population in the hopeless emptiness of atheism. Other formerly communist nations hold another sixth of the world’s population. Islamic nations that ban and persecute Christianity make up the remainder of over half the world’s population, living where God’s word was or still is simply unavailable.
Even in the west, where religious freedom is the norm and where churches abound and the Bible is by far the best selling book week after week and year after year, many people grow up having little or no idea at all who God is or what real religion is all about. Some of them may very well be your neighbors, coworkers or classmates.
God asks us through the Apostle Paul, “How can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14-15) That is why Jesus Christ established his Church in this world before he left it, and then gave us this parting command: “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:15-16)
Many of those who reject the LORD are blinded by fear in their traditional religions.
Christian missionaries find it hard going in many pagan lands. The Shinto religion of Japan, the Taoist religion of China, and some Native American groups worship their ancestors. These religions are all about honoring your parents and grandparents and all those who came before you. There is tremendous pressure to conform to this worship of your people in those cultures, and those who embrace the Christian religion and turn from worshipping people to worshipping the real God are often disowned and persecuted.
In Muslim nations today intimidation often takes the form of open persecution of any who dare to accept Christ as their Savior. Christianity is simply outlawed there and people who embrace Christ in faith are executed.
Some who reject the LORD and his Christ are blinded by their own stubborn pride.
This is the case with a great many people who call themselves Christians today, but who reject the word of God and the God of the Bible. They stubbornly and wrongly insist that Christianity is a “do it your way” religion, in which everyone can believe whatever they want to, or not. With foolish arguments from sin-corrupted reason, they justify their rejection of the truth to believe in lies of their own invention. God foretold this through the Apostle Paul when he wrote to a young pastor named Timothy, “The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
Such people usually put their trust in their own works as a means of salvation, while rejecting the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which opens the door to heaven for those who believe in him. That is the same problem that the Pharisees had at the time of Jesus. It is the problem that Jesus addressed when he told a blind man to whom he had given physical sight, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” John 19:39)
No matter why people’s hearts are blinded by unbelief, Christ opens blind eyes and shines the light of truth into hardened hearts.
Jesus opened the physical eyes of many people who were blind, and he opened the eyes of the mind and heart of many more people through his preaching and his miracles. In him they saw God’s love for sinners in action, and they received forgiveness by their faith in Jesus. Christ still does that today with the word of God, the Bible. With the Bible God shines the light of truth onto our lives and our personal beliefs. There he brings us face to face with the reality of our sins and their disastrous and deadly consequences in our lives.
In addition to looking to the Servant of the Lord to open eyes that are blind, all who are held in the captivity of sin should look to him, because …
II. He Frees Captives From The Dungeon Of Darkness.
That dungeon of darkness is the guilt that sin brings on us.
Satan tempts people to sin, and then he condemns us for our sins before God in order to bring God’s just punishments upon us. Satan uses God’s justice to make people fear God because of our sins and to flee from God and his word. Many a Christian has fallen into sin and then tried to hide from their guilt by turning their back on God.
Though no one can hide from God, Satan does use guilty consciences to tear people away from their Savior by making us feel like we are failures whom God could never love nor want. Thus sin is Satan’s tool to wreck havoc in Christians’ lives, and to kill their souls.
Sin is addictive, demeaning and enslaving.
It is well known and widely recognized that such wrong behaviors as gamboling, drug abuse, sexual immorality and stealing can be addictive and can take over a person’s life and personality. But all sins can be addictive, and sinfulness is the natural state of the human heart. If we do not watch out for and actively fight against sin in our day to day lives, it will creep in and take over.
Sin is demeaning to people. Human beings were created as children of God and we are called to be and to live as God’s children in our lives upon earth. We are called on to be holy people and to treat one another with love and kindness. But people who reject God are likely to believe that people are merely accidents of blind and uncaring nature, descended from slime and progressing by the strong killing the weak. Those who hold that disastrous view of human life murdered well over 50 million people in the twentieth century.
Finally, sin holds people in an iron grip from which people can not escape. What person has ever overcome all sin by his or her own efforts? None! It is a dungeon of despair for those who sit in darkness, just as Isaiah says in our text. Sin inevitably leads to death, as we all find ourselves deteriorating over time with bodies that wear out from the ravages of disease and of our own foolish errors, until they simply cease to function at all. “The wages of sin is death,” as St. Paul told the Roman Christians. (Romans 6:23)
Finally, sin builds up a fortress of hatred and resistance to God.
Those who embrace sin flee from righteousness and hide from reform. Even when they know that they are doing wrong, they often will not change. Last fall there was a determined effort in Congress to end all abstinence education in America’s schools. Those who pushed this effort argued that it just doesn’t work, and that America’s teens must be taught only sexual indulgence and the use of condoms. They insisted on this in spite of overwhelming evidence that their approach has led to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies among American teen-agers, and that exactly the opposite happens when morality and self control are taught.
Or just listen to the fear that is expressed by many throughout America today at the thought that Christians who believe in God and who follow the Bible in our lives may have some influence on the politicians who make our laws, or even win elected office. God and his word are seen as enemies of sin and of sin-filled lifestyles, and they are.
Jesus destroyed sin’s bonds and barriers by earning forgiveness of all sins from God.
His suffering and death on the cross was the payment that satisfied God’s justice and provides forgiveness for our crimes against God. His righteous life under God’s laws earned the holiness that we need in order to live in the presence of God forever. Jesus gives us both complete forgiveness of all sins and perfect righteousness through our faith in him.
Jesus was sent into this world by God to open the doors of sin’s prison and set us free, and that is exactly what he did. But we can only have that freedom when we look to Jesus as the Savior sent from God.
Finally, we must also look to Jesus, the Servant of the Lord, because …
III. He Is God’s Covenant Of Salvation For People.
The Old Testament covenant of salvation that God made with the Israelites at Mt. Sinai called on them to serve God by obeying his laws and commands in everything they did.
That arrangement was virtual slavery for the Israelites. God’s laws and statutes and precepts regulated almost every aspect of their lives. The penalty for breaking most of those rules was either death or banishment from the nation. It was an impossible institution that led most people to fear God rather than love him. For most Israelites, their hope of salvation did not come from their lives under God’s laws, but from God’s promise to their ancestor Abraham that Abraham’s descendants would be a special people who were blessed by God.
The result of that covenant was as predictable as it was tragic: people resented God, who had burdened them with such strict laws, and they failed to even try hard to keep them. God’s laws were eventually replaced by interpretations of the Bible and man-made traditions that cut huge holes in the law for sinners to try to sneak through. But that did not work either, for as St. Paul observes in his epistle to the Galatian Christians, “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’” (Galatians 3:10) Instead being a way to heaven, the law of God acts as a mirror that shows us just how sinful we are and how far short of perfection we have fallen.
That is why God established a new covenant of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Christ took our place under the law to serve God perfectly for us. That is why God calls Jesus, “my servant” in our Old Testament reading today. God promised to take hold of Christ’s hand to strengthen him so that he would fulfill all of God’s requirements completely, and Jesus did. That bought our perfection before God. Now, by faith in Jesus we are given credit for Christ’s perfection and God calls us his saints on earth.
But Christ’s suffering and death on the cross were the key to our salvation, for they paid to God the penalty for our sins and purchased for us forgiveness. God’s new covenant of salvation is faith in Jesus Christ. As St. Paul told the Christians in Corinth, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper for us on the night before he died precisely so that he could assure us absolutely that our sins are all paid for and that righteousness has been given to us as God’s gift. Jesus told his disciples as he instituted this covenantal meal, “Take and eat; this is my body. … Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:26-28) The blood of the covenant that Christ gives to us in this Sacrament guarantees us that our salvation is paid for in full and that we are children of God and heirs of eternal life through our faith in Jesus.
Yes, as God told his Old Testament believers through Isaiah, so he also tells us today, …
Con.: Look To The Servant Of The Lord.
He Is The Light That Open The Eyes Of Those who are Blind to God and his truth.
He Frees Captives From The Dungeon Of the Darkness of sin and despair.
He Is God’s Covenant Of Salvation For People. By faith in him we have God’s gift of eternal life. Amen.